Mourir
by ShadedRogue
Summary: They knew it was risky, suicide even, to try to kidnap Kiyomi Takada.


Nothing like important canonical dates to make the fangirls go nuts. I probably don't need to place a spoiler warning, but I will anyways just in case some hapless new-to-the-fandom-person happens to wander by at some point in the future. So, _**SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 99 OF THE MANGA**_ (I have no idea what episode it is in the anime, 35?). I'm sure if someone didn't know what day this is in Death Note canon before, they certainly do now.

Um...apologies if this is similar to something that someone has written before. I have no doubts that someone has probably written Mello's death (and thoughts) as it happens in the manga/anime, as I am more or less doing. So, if it is, there is no intentional plagarism on my part. I do, however, feel marginally less creative than all the other authors who wrote some brilliant stuff.

Oh, and despite Mello's methods (and sense of morality) being more than a little bit questionable, and there being very little evidence of it, I believe that Mello is actually a religious person (inorite? :O). Whoo, and lastly, this can _very_ _loosely_ be a sequel to _"Whispering Kisses of Butterflies"_

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Death Note

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Mello feels his heart stop, cold, and sudden in his chest as soon as he sees the news report, and thinks for a minute that Kira has finally decided to kill him – that everything is finally over. But it's not, for him at least, not yet. It is for Matt, however, and he realizes with a sudden pang of panic and overwhelming grief what exactly has caused his heart to freeze. Matt lies there, half on the ground and half awkwardly propped against the door of his car, riddled with bullet holes and cooling in a puddle of his own blood. The filter and ash remains of his last cigarette is still tucked between his lips.

Mello knows beyond any doubt that his friend is dead, even before the newscaster, excited and jittery, confirms it.

"No..." he whispers to the screen in barely contained anguish. He has a hard time keeping his eyes on the road as images of Matt's body flash between the face of the newscaster. "No, no, no...you stupid fool, you weren't supposed to die. You weren't, you-"

Empty and meaningless phonemes fall from his lips, tumbling down, dripping down like the blood from Matt's body, but Mello is in too much shock to think anymore. They knew it was risky, suicide even to try to kidnap _(not try, she's in the back of your truck, remember?)_ Kiyomi Takada, Kira's spokesperson, especially when she had a brigade of trigger-happy bodyguards. They had both come to terms with the very high probability of neither of them making it out alive (although Mello had fully intended for Matt to survive). Even if Matt had tried to assure him – and himself – that everything would be alright.

"I'm so sorry, Matt. I didn't think they'd kill you."

_What did you think they were going to do, I wonder?_ Certainly not let him go, not in this day and age. Not with Kira's twisted sense of justice. He had known that he was going to pay a high price going after Takada, but Matt had never been intended as a sacrificial pawn. Mello had been more than willing to pay the price of his own life in order to bring that bastard Kira down, but not Matt's, never Matt's. And he wonders now if Matt's sacrifice would even been worth it, if this little stint would even bring Near's agents any closer to catching Kira.

Mello pulls off the freeway and parks the semi inside the garage of an abandoned church. Takada is all too quiet in the back, but he pays her no mind. His only focus is on Matt's lifeless corpse being rifled at by Takada's bodyguards as the news helicopter circles overhead trying to get every possible angle of one of the men who had so brazenly defied Kira. No one had been that brave in years.

"I'll join you soon," Mello whispers, and he clutches at the crucifix around his neck in a white-knuckled grip, the metal cutting into his fingers as he says a quick prayer for Matt, even though his counterpart had never shared in his religious values. He knows that it is only a matter a time now before Kira finally kills him, no doubt being excited to do so after sitting on his real name for so long. And it's just as well, he never planned on coming out of this alive, not realistically anyways, and now with Matt gone, he doesn't want to.

It's only scant seconds later when he feels his heart constrict, white-hot pain blossoming from his chest, spreading like a cancer, and running down his left arm to the tips of his fingers and back again, prickling like electricity. Through his pain, Mello can only hope that Near can handle the rest, that Matt's death won't be in vain. The pain only lasts for a brief moment, and then there is nothing but blissful silence as his head falls against the steering wheel. Everything is finally over.

* * *

Mourir (French) - verb, to die.


End file.
